White supremacy is a script we’re given at birth
It’s written in our flesh and rehearsed throughout history.
Maybe, after the last few months, a broader portion of the US population can now understand what James Baldwin meant when he said, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” The rage is useful to the extent that it helps generate new knowledge about the world that can help our efforts toward change for the good of all. In a nation with a history of slavery and lynching, the fact that Black people bleed and die isn’t new information. What may be new to many people, however, is just how prevalent and persistent White supremacy is in this country.
According to Baldwin, White people remain trapped within a history that they do not understand, one from which they need release—but they must act, must be committed. To act in response to this history, however, is terrifying. It requires engaging a complete recalibration of identity. Short of that, there is no exit.
Reality has been hijacked, and the result is a history of carnage. The place where I am writing this—Cook County, Illinois—is populated by the two demographics hardest hit by COVID-19: Black and Brown people. And in the midst of so much death and uncertainty caused by the pandemic, we have been forced, yet again, to behold the spectacle of the state killing unarmed Black people. When 46-year-old George Floyd pleaded with police officers, “I can’t breathe!” while calling out for his mother as he lay dying in handcuffs, face down on the street with a White officer choking him to death, the world was shaken from its precautionary shelter-in-place.
